JON CARROLL -- Button Pushing In American Life

PICTURE, IF YOU will, a busy intersection in a typical American city. There is a four-way stoplight at the intersection. Attached to a pole at each corner of the intersection is a box with a button in it. A sign on the box says, "Push Button for Light."

Person A walks up to the button box and pushes the button. Nothing happens. This should not come as a surprise to Person A, because nothing frequently happens when the button is pushed. (I know why that's so, and I'll tell you in a minute.)

So after about 10 seconds, Person A pushes the button again, as though maybe the light hadn't realized how very important this particular call to action is. After five more seconds, Person A pushes the button for a third time, this time with an exasperated grunt and a muffled oath.

He's getting mad at a button. You've heard of road rage? This is button rage. Then Person B walks up. Person B observes Person A waiting for the light, but thinks that perhaps Person A has recently arrived from Romania and doesn't know about the magic button. Or maybe Person B understands that Person A is a person of no consequence, a traveler in notions and thread or a free-lance brickwork consultant, whereas he, Person B, is a doctor.

So Person B takes an authoritative, doctorly thumb and pushes that darn button. And pushes it again. Then Person A reaches around Person B and gives the button another push. They have both lived in America for a long time and have had a chance to observe button dynamics for years, and yet still they push. Because they're important. Because they're in a hurry. Because neither of them wants his epitaph to be: He fought the button, and the button won.

MANY YEARS AGO, I wrote a story about Caltrans. Well, I didn't actually write it, but I did report it. Then life happened, and the Caltrans story went the way of my other unpublished masterworks, including the Al Rosen profile (written but terrible) and a 7,000- word exegesis on a porn star named Darby Lloyd Rains (written and brilliant but unprinted, for convoluted reasons).

So I have many fabulous facts about Caltrans. It maintains, for instance, the largest garden in California, all those plantings beside all those roadways up and down the state.

And I learned about the button. The button, as life experience has already told you, does not make the light change instantly. The button increases the duration of the pedestrian walk signal so that pedestrians can get across when the light does change.

It is not like summoning an elevator. It does not allow you to create a green light automatically. If it did that, people would keep pushing it and pushing it and the cars would be backed up to Little America, Wyo.

THERE'S A SIMILAR dynamic in elevators. Person A gets on and pushes the button for Floor 5. The button lights up. Then Person B gets on and pushes the button for Floor 7. That button lights up.

Then Person C gets on. That person also wants to go to Floor 5. He looks at the panel. He sees that the button for Floor 5 is lit up. And he pushes it anyway. He wants the elevator to know that he, Person C, has entered the conveyance, and it better stop at the fifth floor or there will be Person C hell to pay, and you don't want to bear that wrath, even if you're a metal box named Otis.

It's all about the illusion of control. Deep in our hearts, we know we've lost it; we know we never had it. But that's far too scary to deal with every day, so we pretend. These are my buttons; hear me roar.

Since that hour my body is consumed, and my soul dies of longing; that unhappy woman has poisoned me with
jrc@sfgate.com
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Ah, but my television does just what I tell it to do, loyal beast.